The Press - The press's many roles

Among the press's roles are what are called the "three
I's"—information, interpretation, and interest. Roger
Hilsman, a political scientist and State Department official in the John
F. Kennedy administration, identified "the gathering and
dissemination of information" as a major function of the press. The
flow of information through the press—among all the people seeking
to influence policy in Washington, from the capital to the public, and
from the public back to officials partly through press coverage and
reporters' questions—is the lifeblood of America's
democratic system.

Information in press coverage of foreign affairs is almost always
accompanied by interpretation. Journalists provide contexts (often called
"frames") in which information is conveyed. "By
suggesting the cause and relationships of various events," the
political scientist Doris A. Graber observes, "the media may shape
opinions even without telling their audiences what to believe or think.
For example, linking civil strife in El Salvador [in the 1980s] to the
activities of Soviet and Cuban agents ensured that the American public
would view the situation with considerable alarm." Among
policymakers in Washington, Hilsman notes,

the press is not the sole source of interpretation. The president, the
secretary of state, the assistant secretaries, American ambassadors,
senators, congressmen, academic experts—all are sources of
interpretation. But the fact that the press is there every day, day
after day, with its interpretations makes it the principal competitor of
all the others in interpreting events.

The press also can play an important role in stirring interest in an issue
both in Washington and among the public. During the Ronald Reagan years
media reporting awakened public interest on starvation in Ethiopia, a
topic that Americans had shown little interest in prior to the appearance
of illustrated stories about dying children in the press and on
television. An example from the James Earl Carter years was the debate
over whether to deploy enhanced radiation nuclear bombs (also called
neutron bombs) in western Europe. The debate began with a story by Walter
Pincus in the
Washington Post
on 6 June 1977. A quotation in the story noted that the bombs would
"kill people" while "leaving buildings and tanks
standing." Once the story was framed in this negative way—on
television and radio as well as in newspapers and magazines—the
administration was not able to gain public and congressional support for
deploying the new weapon. The unfolding of this story illustrates a
frequent pattern in foreign policy: print journalists often bring stories
to public attention, after which they are covered by other print and
electronic reporters.

Stirring interest through extensive news and editorial coverage is often
called the agenda-setting function of the media. The political scientist
Bernard C. Cohen explained this concept cogently: "The press is
significantly more than a purveyor of information and opinion. It may not
be successful much of the time in telling people what to think, but it is
stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think
about.
"

Building on Cohen's path-breaking research, other scholars have
refined the concept of agenda setting. While agreeing that the news media
often play an important role in the agenda-setting process, most analysts
now believe that agenda setting is a complex process in which unexpected
events or administration officials or (less frequently) members of
Congress or interest groups often play at least as significant roles as
journalists. Because officials and other participants in the policymaking
process in Washington frequently work hard to get their viewpoints into
the press, the communications professor J. David Kennamer notes,
"[t]he news media are as much the target of agenda-setting as they
are the source." Moreover, the relative importance of journalists
to other actors in agenda setting varies from issue to issue. Thus,
although the press plays a significant role in deciding which foreign
policy issues to cover and which ones to make into "big
stories," it shares the agenda-setting function with other actors
in the political process.

In another important role, that of "watchdog," the press
ferrets out and publicizes questionable policies or abuses of authority.
As a reporter for a Midwestern newspaper told Cohen: "We are the
fourth estate, and it is our duty to monitor—to watch and
interpret—what our government does." Because officials often
control the flow of information to the press in regard to secret
operations, the press's performance as a watchdog has been mixed.
During the Iran-Contra scandal of the mid-1980s, for example, American
journalists were slow to learn about the operation—indeed, the
story was broken by a publication in Lebanon well after the administration
had engaged in illicit activity in the Middle East and in Central America.
After the story broke, however, leading newspapers and magazines did an
excellent job of bringing details to the attention of policymakers in
Washington (including members of Congress) and the American people.

Journalists also can play an important role as critics of particular
foreign policies. Although far fewer people read editorials and columns
(opinion pieces) than read front-page news stories (or, for that matter,
the comics and the sports pages!), the people most interested and involved
in foreign affairs—officials, journalists, other leaders in
society, and the "attentive public" (the roughly 10 to 20
percent of the public with the greatest interest in public
issues)—not only read editorials and columns regularly, but they
often discuss them with other people, thus enhancing their impact. In
influencing the thinking of elites, editorial writers and columnists
affect the public discussion of foreign affairs that gradually works its
way down to many average voters. While the exact influence of editorials
and columns cannot be determined, it seems clear that the serious
questions that were being raised about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam on
the editorial pages of numerous newspapers beginning in the mid-1960s
helped to create the climate of opinion in which the continuation of the
war by the Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon administrations became
increasingly difficult.

Finally, the press contributes greatly to the policymaking process in
Washington, both in the executive branch and in Congress. Administration
officials read leading papers and magazines to learn what other officials
and members of Congress are thinking and doing, and to try to figure out
which other officials are "leaking" information to the press
and what policy goals they are seeking to advance by doing so. Officials
also are interested in reading stories by journalists stationed in other
countries in order to get opinions other than the ones being sent from the
U.S. embassies there.

Members of Congress and their staffs are eager to learn what is going on
in the administration, so that they can support or oppose the current
direction of policy. Especially since the late 1960s, many members of
Congress—particularly ones who are not members of the
president's party—have been eager to limit the executive
branch's power in foreign affairs and increase their own influence
on particular foreign policy issues. To achieve these goals, they
frequently have worked closely with reporters.

Robert J. Kurz, a former legislative assistant, wrote in 1991 that members
of Congress "form alliances with the press because they share a
common interest, often a rivalry, against the executive." Kurz
continued:

These alliances solidify during times of controversy and tension with a
president. It is not unusual for the Congress and the press to work
together to discover what the executive is up to, uncover wrongdoing, or
expose inherent contradictions in policies or their implementation. They
share the desire for the notoriety and attention that comes with this
conflict.

An important role for the press, therefore, has been to help to maintain
the tenuous balance of power between the executive branch and Congress
in foreign affairs. Cohen has written that, because "the media
are themselves one of the most articulate and informed outside
participants in the foreign policymaking process," they
"unavoidably affect the environment in which foreign policy
decisions are made by 'insiders.'"

The "alliances" between reporters and members of Congress
that Kurz writes about provide an apt illustration of Cohen's
point.